President Andrew Johnson

Introduction by Dr. Robert Orr

Portrait of Andrew Johnson

The year 2008 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. Greeneville, Tennessee, his hometown,
will honor this anniversary in a year-long celebration. Although Johnson is widely denounced as one of the worst presidents in American history,
he accomplished much during his life and Presidency.

Johnson freed the slaves of Tennessee by proclamation on October 24, 1864, when he was Military Governor of Tennessee, and he was President of the
United States on December 18, 1865, when Secretary of State William Seward announced that the 13th Amendment was officially part of the U.S.
Constitution, ending slavery in the United States. Johnson had been active in getting the 13th Amendment ratified.

As President, Johnson urged that the freed slaves be given their personal and property rights. He believed that they would quickly earn full
citizenship, including voting rights. By the Constitution, state governments, not the federal government, set voting qualifications, and Johnson
insisted on following the Constitution. When a black delegation asked for immediate voting rights for the freed slaves, Johnson told them that
he and the delegation "were both desirous of accomplishing the same ends, but proposed to do so by following different roads."

In 1867 the Military Reconstruction Acts were passed over Johnson's vetoes, his objection being that the new laws coupled enfranchising the
freed slaves with disfranchising the ex-rebels (which, in the Deep South, meant most white voters). This, he believed, would lead to racial
strife and hostility. When asked in August 1867 how he preferred to enforce the Reconstruction Acts, he answered that he "desired a fair
registration of all qualified voters without regard to race or color."

Memorial statue of Andrew Johnson in Greeneville, Tennessee

That same August, Johnson tried to have black leader Frederick Douglass become director of the Freedmen's Bureau. Unfortunately, Douglass refused.

As Johnson was pursuing these goals, leading Radical Republicans were scheming with a notorious perjurer, Sanford Conover, to concoct evidence
that Johnson had been part of the plot to murder Lincoln. The Radicals were trying to fabricate grounds for an impeachment. Johnson and the
Radicals began a struggle that culminated in his impeachment by the House of Representatives (on other concocted charges) and acquittal by the
Senate in May 1868.

In the Presidential Election of fall 1868, African-Americans in the Deep South voted for the first time American history, and Johnson
"acquiesced without objection" to the vote, according the the Secretary of War, who supervised the election.

Thus, the record of the Johnson Presidency includes the end of American slavery and the first extensive voting by African Americans in a U.S.
Presidential election. The Johnson Presidency also saw the restoration of the American Union, the peaceful disbanding of a million-man army,
the purchase of Alaska and Midway Island, and a return of the nation to economic prosperity.

You may learn the details of these and other events in Johnson's life in Greeneville's year-long celebration of the Bicentennial of his birth,
and through updates on this website.